


bastogne

by hardboiledmeggs



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, a very unhappy and very late christmas fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10016792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledmeggs/pseuds/hardboiledmeggs
Summary: In 1944, Steve and Peggy run into each other in Bastogne; or, the last kiss before the last kiss.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This little scene is sort of the third part of a series of little ficlets about Steve and Peggy in occupied France.
> 
>  
> 
> [Part 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3865819)
> 
>  
> 
> [Part 2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3477758/chapters/8209093)

**1944**

**BELGIUM**

 

“My balls are fuckin’ ice cubes,” Dugan whines. Next to him, Bucky barks a cold, brittle laugh.

 

Late December has turned the Ardennes into a barren wilderness. Snow piles high around the roots of bare-branched trees and sits heavy on evergreen boughs. The woods around them are frozen and silent; Steve supposes that what animals haven’t been driven away by subzero temperatures have been repelled by the near-constant barrage of German artillery. The snow under their feet has been turned to muddy slush by the jeeps ahead of them; Steve’s boots slip a little with every step.

 

“This’s nothing. In DC--” Gabe starts, but Dugan raises a finger.

 

“Don’t you start on me, college boy,” he growls, then tucks his hands under his armpits.

 

Steve feels himself deflate along with Gabe. Dugan and Bucky think Gabe’s a world-class idiot for dropping his degree to join this godforsaken war, but Steve likes hearing his stories about university lecture halls and campus life and the swirling, frenetic energy of the nation’s capital. Now, on the long road to Bastogne, he would even have listened to Gabe’s stories about the frozen Potomac.

 

Instead, for several long miles, he listens to the rumble of engines and the grind of tank treads. He listens to Dugan’s grousing and Gabe and Dernier’s quiet chatter and the way Bucky’s breath catches in his throat.

 

Attached to the 4th Armored Division, they reach the German line on Christmas Day. It takes nearly two more long, bloody days before the line is broken and they march into shattered, crumbling Bastogne.

 

Steve has seen the disillusionment in Bucky’s eyes, and he sees it then. He knows Bucky’s been in this war longer than he has. But Steve knows, too, that he’ll never get used to seeing the things they have to see, now: buildings so battered by bombs they shouldn’t even be standing. Tears of relief on the faces of terrorized children. The bodies of servicemen, piled and covered by tarps, waiting to be buried millions of miles from everyone and everything they had loved.

 

The Commandos follow Steve through rubble-strewn streets, even though he isn’t sure where he’s leading them. They come to a clearing - what’s left of a town square - bordered on one side by a blackened shell of a cathedral. Something squirms under Steve’s boots and he looks down to see that he’s stepped in a pool of dark blood, cooling and congealing in the frigid air. The sight of it is so bizarre, so horrifying, that for a long moment all he can feel is confusion. He stares at his feet stupidly, with his head full of fog, then he feels Bucky’s hand grab his elbow.

 

Steve looks up, and Bucky nods towards the cathedral. “Shit,” he hears Morita say behind them.

 

He almost  _ feels _ her before he sees her - that strange tug behind his heart. And then he turns his head and sees her already coming towards him. Bucky shakes his arm, shakes him awake, and Steve moves forward, meeting Peggy halfway and wrapping his arms around her. Her face presses against his chest, and for a moment, he feels whole.

 

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he swears in the language of his Catholic mother. “What are you doing here. What are you doing  _ here _ .”

 

“I came to help,” she says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The line closed right behind me. It’s been a bloody nightmare.” Her hands grip tight to his jacket.

 

He pulls back from her then, holding her by the shoulders and looking her up and down. She’s dressed in the same style - plain and provincial, unremarkable and undercover - as the last time they ran into each other, on a train heading into Paris.

 

“Are you still  _ Colette _ ?” he asks. She scoffs and shakes her head. Her eyes are hollow and lined in red and purple. She’s lost weight.

 

“None of that matters any more. Not here, anyway.”

 

Steve thinks of the first time he saw her in France - living in a farmhouse in Gascony with her gigantic SOE wireless hidden under the floorboards of her room. The thought of it - of Peggy joining all those women scattered across occupied France with their radios and secret codes, evading Nazi troops through sheer force of will - had terrified him.

 

As the Americans invaded and steamed towards Paris, those same women had been hunted down and thrown into prison cells. Tortured. Executed. After D-Day, not a night went by that Steve didn’t pray to whatever god might be listening that Peggy might make it out of France alive.

 

He looks down, and it takes a moment for it to register: the white apron tied around her waist, smeared with dark blood and mud, and something sickly yellow. 

 

“Peggy--” he whispers, locking his knees to keep himself from falling to the ground.

 

“It isn’t--” she starts and stops. “It isn’t mine.”

 

“I know,” he says. He remembers what she’d told him about the youth ambulance corps she’d joined as a teenager in leafy-green Surrey. He doesn’t imagine that as a girl learning how to roll bandages she’d ever found herself covered in shit and blood and muck like the woman before him now.

 

He feels Bucky come up behind them, holding out an open carton of cigarettes. Peggy takes one, murmuring her thanks as Bucky holds up a light. The cigarette trembles between her fingers, and Steve’s heart aches. She closes her eyes as she inhales.

 

A jeep careens around piles of debris and comes to a screeching halt in the middle of the smoldering plaza.

 

“MEDIC,” shouts a man with a screaming eagle emblazoned on the sleeve of his uniform.

 

Something behind Peggy’s eyes shutters closed; she turns automatically, drops and crushes the cigarette under her boot, and runs away from Steve and towards the private lying across the car’s hood, groaning and bloodied. Morita follows her, pulling his rucksack from his back to his front, ready to help. Steve is pulled after them, running, pumping his lead-filled legs until he suddenly feels too close to the black-haired man squirming on the jeep’s hood, with his leg torn to shreds and his teeth clenched and tears streaming from his eyes.

 

[Another nurse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Chiwy) runs out of the hollowed-out church. She has skin the color of toffee, and barks orders at Peggy in French. Steve can only watch as she moves, automatically, compulsively, shell-shocked and horrified but moving forward all the same.

 

“Never mind that,” Peggy says, swatting away Morita’s hands when he reaches to help. She turns towards to the corporal who had driven the car in. “These men need to get to the front,” she says sharply, gesturing towards the Commandos.

 

The corporal looks at Steve with dark, dead eyes. His jaw is set, smeared with ash and gore. His hand shakes just slightly as he raises it for a salute.

 

“Wherever you need us,” Steve says, trying not to look at Peggy, trying not to think of how violently he’s about to be torn away from her.

 

The other nurse brings out a stretcher, and this time, when Morita moves to help move the soldier to it, Peggy doesn’t push him aside. Instead, she turns to Steve with something unreadable in her eyes.

 

“Where will you go after this?” she asks, and Steve hears what she doesn’t say:  _ How will I find you again _ . 

 

“We’ll leave with the 4th,” he tells her. “Head south. Follow HYDRA into the Alps.”

 

She nods and puts her hands on her hips. “Right, right.” Her brow furrows; she swallows.

 

In the distance, Steve hears the rumble and  _ boom _ of artillery shells in the forest. The corporal shudders and slumps into the jeep’s driver’s seat, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel. 

 

“I love you,” Steve says, quietly and not for the first time, and Peggy just closes her eyes and shakes her head.

 

“Don’t--” she says, and he knows why. He knows she can’t stand anything that sounds like  _ goodbye _ .

 

He steps towards her, looping his arms around her waist, and  _ oh _ it feels good to hold her again. Her fingernails dig into the soft leather of his jacket. 

 

“We’ll meet in London,” he whispers against the side of her neck, “At HQ. We’ll make it there. After-- After all this is over.”

 

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and then, quiet and strong, “It’ll never be over. Not for us.” She pulls back to look him in the face, and there’s a kind of grief in her eyes, like she knows something he’ll never understand. “We’ll always be right  _ here _ .”

 

It takes him weeks to figure out what she means.

 

She kisses him, slow and purposefully, with her hands holding his face, and then she says it back to him - “I love you” - and it does sound like  _ goodbye _ .

 

The Commandos pile into the corporal’s jeep. The rubber tires screech and roll against Bastogne’s ancient cobblestones. Steve looks back, once, and sees Peggy linger, just for a moment, watching him go.

 

And then they turn a corner, and she’s gone.

  
  
  
  



End file.
